Update 8-1-06

Hi,

First, it's the Public Service Announcement Express, all timely.

From Emily Kleinman Schreiber:  The next Alumni Association meeting will be this coming Thursday, August 3rd, at 7:15 PM in South High's library.  I hope many of you will attend.  Also, the tree planting that was planned for before the meeting has been postponed until the student in charge of beautifying the courtyard gets final approval from the school board.
   
    From Claire Brush Reinhardt and Roberta Birnel, '60:  NBC Dateline recently featured a segment on popular salad mixes being sold in plastic bags in supermarkets, and the FDA issued a nationwide health alert on Dole Pre-Packaged Salads.  The Dateline documentary highlighted the entire production process and disclosed that E-coli had been showing up in the bagged salad.  It has not been ascertained how the salad mix gets contaminated with E-coli, but serious illness and even deaths have been occurring in many states.  The public is warned not to buy any salad mix until the cause of the contamination has been determined.
        This is confirmed by the Urban Legends site:  In May 2006, the warning quoted above began appearing in e-mail.  It is a mixture of two items: an October 2005 warning from the Food and Drug Administration about E. coli found in prepackaged salads vended by Dole in the Minnesota area, and a April 30, 2006, NBC Dateline segment about that October 2005 outbreak.  Though thrown together from two sources, the alert is accurate:  E. coli was found in bagged salad mix in October 2005, and the FDA did issue a nationwide consumer alert about it.  Dole Food Company recalled the implicated salad products, but even so twenty-three people who had eaten the contaminated greens became ill.
   
    From Bern Cohen, '60:  Wherever you look this week and next in the New York City theater media, there will be a heavy buzz about one show or another that's in The New York Fringe Festival which begins on August 11th.  I'd like to tell you about The HA HA Club, the musical comedy in which I have one of the leads.  Our show features seven residents in a home for the aged who rebel against the outmoded rules and change their lives for the better.  The play originated in Columbus, Ohio.  The director, producer, and several cast members arrived last Monday to begin seven-days-a-week, nine-hours-a-day of rehearsing before our opening on August 12th.  Several other New York City actors and I are replacing Columbus actors who are unavailable at this time.
        We were given a beautiful 350-seat theater for our five performances.  That is a great, considering most participating venues are tiny.  We also have eight musicians.  Our show is not stodgy.  We sing about our new Viagra-prodded sexuality, and after going to several movies with real hotties, I finally get laid.  Don't worry, its offstage.  Tickets are fifteen dollars and are available at:  http://www.ticketweb.com/

    And from Joe Anfora, '60:  I'm performing in Neil Simon' s Laughter on the 23rd Floor at the Stage Theater in Merrick.  It runs Fridays through Sundays until August 6th.  Tickets prices are under twenty dollars.  The theater is located at 2222 Hewlett Avenue, Merrick, and the box office phone number is:  516-868-6400.  If you can make it great.  Either way, the best to all of you.
   
    End of Public Service Announcements.
   
    From Helen David, who notes she's been retired since 1985:  I always eagerly await your weekly news, and it's apparently the time to let you know.  Of course, I still have you all in a time set -- at the period of your yearbook photos.  Since your update arrives early in the morning, I get fully shaken up and awakened when the information is about wives, college- age children, married children, and even grandchildren.  I remember so many of your classmates as they were -- the mischievous ones, the serious students, the naughty students -- and now you are all achievers in one way or another.
        And talking about the heat:  nobody even bothers to think about Phoenix, which has temperatures in the three digits for much of the spring and the summer.  And we have dust storms and no significant rain since January.  My husband and I have just returned from the South Pacific, where we traded sauna conditions for those of a steam bath.  At least, we were on an air conditioned cruise ship a good part of the time.  It was one of those ships that featured snorkeling, underwater walking, kayaking, and even scuba diving.  Great for you youths!
        I love you all.
   
    [Rich -- And it's always great to hear from you.]
   
    From Linda Cohen Greenseid:  I recently visited Florida.  When I left New York, it was 96 degrees.  When I arrived in Florida, it was 87.  That's the first time it was ever hotter here than there.  Though my son Jamie in Los Angeles told me of your record-breaking numbers.  I believe Woodland Hills, where Rich Eisbrouch lives, won, at 119.
   
    From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  Miami, for all of its bad rap, has never broken the 90 degree mark.  Granted, the humidity has reached above that, daily.  But we do enjoy cross breezes from both the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf, even though we're forty miles inland from the beaches.  So anytime anyone wants to cool off in Miami, summer rates are in effect at the Pech Palace.
   
    [Rich -- I wrote Barbara that the Florida humidity would kill me.  To which Barbara replied:  Yeah, but without the humidity, I'd have straight hair.]
   
    And Robin Feit Baker added:  Sorry you're suffering from the elements.  Please take care of yourself.  Meanwhile, warmest regards.  Whoops, wrong choice of words.
   
    More seriously, from Peggy Cooper Schwartz:  Our son, David, 29, emigrated to Israel four years ago.  Jewish people call this making aliyah.  He was in the army for six months last year, and now he is in the artillery reserves.  David would like nothing more than peace.  But he is ready to fight should his unit be called up.  I speak with him each day and pray for his safety.  Currently, David is in Jerusalem, where it has been relatively calm.  I miss David a great deal, but I realize that Israel must defend itself and that Hezbollah must be stopped.  Remember, it was Israel who gave back the Sinai to Egypt, left Gaza, dismembered its own Jewish settlements, and signed a peace treaty with Jordan and Egypt.
   
    From Marilyn Horowitz Goldhammer:  Yes, Barnet, Richard Silvestri's name appears on many Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles.  I've done them every week since high school, and I remember the first time I saw his name there.  I figured it had to be him.  Also, we have several good friends whose kids are at Kenyon, and they love it.  It has become a very hot school in the east.
   
    [Rich -- finally, from me again:  I have three new SAT students, two guys and a girl.  None of them are stupid.  All have scores in the low 500's per test and want to raise them to 600.  The SAT book has an introductory quote from Aristotle Onassis.  I ask if they know who he is.  All say, "Yes," and think he's an old Greek philosopher.  The guys aren't certain about the Greek.  I say, "No, at one time he was probably the richest man in the world, and that's why he merits the quote."  To further connect to Onassis, I ask if they know who John Kennedy was.  I'm expecting an easy answer.
        I get an uneasy one.  They all know he was a president.  They don't know much more.  I ask what they most remember about him.  I'm expecting, "He got shot."  I get nothing.
        "Nothing?" I ask.
        Nothing.
        I explain that he got shot.  I explain that at one point maybe every guy in the United States, if not the world, wanted to be John Kennedy.  That he was that cool.  I ask if they know who Jackie Kennedy was.  The girl says, "His sister?"  The guys just stare.
        I explain that at one point maybe every woman in the United States, if not the world, wanted to be Jackie Kennedy, and every man, possibly anywhere, wanted to marry her.  These are high school students.  I can't say, "Take her to bed."
        Of course, they don't know what happened to Mrs. Kennedy after the President got shot.  Though they do understand the concepts of trophy wives and pre-nuptial agreements.  This is LA.
        By the way, none of them wear watches.  They all tell time by their phones.]
   
    Oh, yeah:  the Tampio / Gibson Award winners' information will be here next week.  Probably.  And a few more suggestions about the newsletter.  I figured we all needed a break from that.